ST. LOUIS – Cardinal Raymond Burke, Archbishop Emeritus of St. Louis, is on a ventilator because of COVID-19.

Burke announced to his Twitter followers on Aug. 10 that he had tested positive for the virus.

Various tweets say that doctors are encouraged by his progress and that followers are praying the rosary for him.

The 73-year-old was named Archbishop of St. Louis in Dec. 2003 and installed to the post in Jan. 2004. He led the archdiocese until June 2008 when he was transferred to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church, aside from the pope.

Pope Francis later removed Burke from the Apostolic Signatura in Nov. 2014 and named him Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

In March 2020, just as the pandemic was unfolding in the United States, Cardinal Burke released a statement calling for churches and places of worship to remain open and seemed to imply COVID as a punishment of sorts.

“In the same light, a person of faith cannot consider the present calamity in which we find ourselves without considering also how distant our popular culture is from God,” Burke wrote. “It is not only indifferent to His presence in our midst but openly rebellious toward Him and the good order with which He has created us and sustains us in being.”

Later in the year, the cardinal delivered a homily at a Wisconsin church promulgating a conspiracy theory that the virus was part of a plot “by certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations, to advance their evil agenda.”